Chapter 53
There were, in fact, many things I wanted to ask.
Why he had tried to brainwash people, even going so far as to set up a free soup kitchen,
Whether those who had been brainwashed could be returned to normal,
And whether he had felt not the slightest pang of conscience while doing all this─.
But.
The moment I came face-to-face with the ‘disgusting evil’ wearing a human face, my body moved before I could think.
“P-please wait a moment. I don’t know how you got in here, but it seems you’ve made some sort of terrible misunderstanding.”
Thick beads of sweat ran down his good-natured-looking face.
Yet his narrowed eyes darted about, desperately searching for a way out of the crisis before him.
“Ah, you may have gotten the wrong idea from seeing those people. They’re receiving treatment right now. Haha….”
I didn’t stop walking.
The pig who ran the cult facility reflexively began backing away.
At the same time.
The other believers who had been watching their surroundings stiffened their faces and rushed at me without hesitation.
“How dare an unbeliever who doesn’t even understand the flow of the Cycle threaten our Venerable Master…!”
“Protect the Venerable Master from the intruder!!”
Like the believer I’d seen at the grocery store, they completely disregarded their own lives.
The leader, naturally recovering his composure, shrugged casually.
“Oh dear, it seems you have no intention of clearing up this misunderstanding. Believers, bring these two ignorant men before me─.”
Suddenly, the cult leader’s mouth clamped shut.
My low kick, kept low enough to sweep the floor, slammed into the believers’ calves.
Crack!!
They collapsed limply to the side like bowling pins struck by a bowling ball.
Calf kick.
This kick, which maximized the strengths of the outside leg kick, was the essence of MMA, said to have upended the landscape of mixed martial arts upon its appearance.
However, unlike the calf kick, which stimulates the peroneal nerve and inflicts tremendous pain,
my kicks destroyed my opponents’ calf bones wholesale.
Seeing my clean and decisive performance, the cult leader muttered in a trembling voice.
“B-but they’re all ordinary people….”
“So what?”
Then he shouldn’t have let them charge me in the first place.
Brainwashed or not, I had no intention of going easy on them.
‘At least without killing them.’
Even though their leg bones had been completely shattered, the believers seemed unable to feel any pain, waving their hands from the floor with mad eyes.
“…Oh, God!!”
“Stop right there, you devil!!”
But I know from having broken one myself: once your ankle is wrecked, you physically can’t stand up.
If both ankles are broken, you can’t even get up hopping on one leg.
Ignoring the believers writhing on the floor like earthworms, I walked toward my target.
“D-don’t come any closer….”
The nameless cult leader’s clothes were so gaudy that, as he desperately tried to run away, he tripped over his own trailing robes and fell grandly forward.
“…I said don’t come near me!!”
He spat out a line that gave me a strange sense of déjà vu, then pulled a revolver festooned with expensive decorations from inside his robes.
Bang─! Bang!! Bang!
As I understand it, revolvers hold far fewer rounds in their cylinders than ordinary automatic pistols.
Perhaps because he hurriedly aimed with one hand, only one of the six rounds he fired reached me.
Thump─.
In the slowly flowing world of consciousness,
I successfully inferred the direction of the muzzle and caught the bullet.
‘So I can do this.’
Though about half of it was luck.
Ping….
Seeing his face go deathly pale, I felt catching it had been worth the effort.
The cult leader swallowed and started babbling all sorts of things.
“D-do you want money? Judging by your skills, you look like a mercenary hired by someone. I can give you double what you were paid…. No, ten times, easy.”
“……”
“I’m serious. Do you know who’s behind me? There are plenty of big shots you can’t even imagine!!”
“……”
“The head of a megacorp! A gang boss! And another…. Goddamn it, where the hell is that bastard? Why is he taking so long to get here! Calm down, just calm down for now….”
When I didn’t stop walking,
“…Fuck! Listen to me, damn it!!”
his mask came off completely.
Once again, the best way to settle a dispute was simple and fast, rather than a boring, pedantic explanation.
I had never had any intention of stopping, no matter what the cult leader spouted.
You don’t need a special reason to pick up trash off the floor.
Unless someone who suddenly appeared got in my way.
“……”
“……”
I stared silently at the man who emerged from behind the cult leader.
The man wore such unusual stealth clothing that anyone might mistake him for someone in cosplay, and he blocked my path without saying a word.
The cult leader’s complexion brightened at the sight of him.
“Phew, whew…. You arrived just in time.”
Then, with an overt expression that had completely erased his good-natured smile, he pointed at me.
“…You son of a bitch!! I told you to stop! Do you know who’s standing in front of you? He was sent by Hakuga-gumi to protect me, no less─.”
I didn’t wait for him to finish and suddenly kicked the ground.
Bang!!
Along with the bullet I had dropped moments earlier, fragments of shattered concrete flew at the cult leader like buckshot.
At that moment.
The man’s scarf, which I had thought was merely unusual clothing, spread wide and hardened until it was as rigid as metal.
‘What the hell is this now….’
The bullet and concrete fragments I had kicked failed to reach the cult leader and dropped to the floor with a clatter.
His clothes, too.
Could this bastard be…?
“Do─mo, I’m Abel Anderson.”
“……”
Whew, thankfully, he didn’t seem to be a real ninja.
Nor did alarm bells of danger ring as they had when I met a megacorp employee at Black Square.
Then Michael, who had been watching us from a distance, raised his voice.
“I’ve heard rumors that Hakuga-gumi operates a special tactical organization…! As one would expect from an organization with roots in old Japan, they are extremely dangerous─.”
Before Michael could finish.
This time, something flashed from across the way.
A long shuriken launched from the man’s fingertips, flying toward Michael.
An ambush after an aisatsu…!
It was moving fast enough that I had no choice but to block the shuriken with my palm.
Then a small hole opened in my palm, and
I spun the bloodstained shuriken around like a pen.
“Hot Dog Man…!!”
“I’m fine.”
A little spit would really heal this.
Maybe because adrenaline was flooding my system, it didn’t particularly hurt.
The taciturn man, who had kept his arms folded in a solemn pose, finally spoke his first words.
“…So, you’re Hot Dog Man.”
He had ignored me when I introduced myself with an aisatsu, yet reacted with interest to my nickname.
His voice was memorable, hoarse as though his vocal cords had been ground down with sandpaper.
“Just as expected. You came here in person to attack an organization under our management.”
“…What?”
“You don’t have to pretend you don’t know.”
When he unfolded his arms, thick muscles rippled beneath the black stealth suit as though they might burst through it.
“It’s already common knowledge that you joined hands with that gunpowder-smelling mafia.”
“Why are you suddenly bringing up the mafia?”
“Not to mention the Hall Paradise incident.”
His lowered eyes fixed Michael and me with a steady gaze.
“…I have concluded that your intention is to sever the limbs of our Hakuga-gumi one by one.”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
When I suddenly cursed, the ninja flinched and stopped mid-sentence.
“You’re the ones who keep choosing to do nothing but fucked-up shit, and now…. What a bunch of laughable bastards.”
“……”
“Don’t you people even know the term ‘self-awareness’?”
“……”
“Look at them shutting their mouths because they’ve got nothing to say.”
“…That filthy way of speaking is unbecoming of a boss and more like that of a street thug.”
I’m not a boss or anything.
Anyway.
I hadn’t intended to talk for long, but it was utterly disgusting how they caused the problem themselves and then looked for the reason in someone else.
I knew the cyberpunk genre had a lot of Japanese elements, but seeing him dressed like nothing more than a ‘ninja cosplayer’ made me feel stifled.
‘For now, I’ll keep telekinesis as a trump card.’
The best defense is offense.
A famous saying left behind by many commanders.
I immediately kicked off the ground and charged forward.
“Eek…!!”
Naturally, I was heading straight for the cult leader.
But perhaps he had anticipated my move, because his sharpened scarf hurtled toward me.
At the same time, a fairly sharp kick flew toward my abdomen.
Just as I reflexively moved to block it, I noticed a sharp blade protruding from the tip of his foot.
“Given how underhanded your skills are, it’s obvious what village you came from.”
“…I’m from this city.”
What?
Dodging the blade and blocking the kick, I gauged how much force my opponent possessed.
Even then, the scarf, transformed into something as hard as steel plating, was targeting me from multiple directions.
In fact, even a steel plate without sharpened edges would be enough to slice a human body apart under sufficient pressure.
Since I couldn’t evade every attack, I had no choice but to grab the pointed scarf with my hand.
Drops of blood sprang into the air.
Then.
The scarf, which suddenly softened, instantly coiled tightly around my hand.
“Caught like a rat.”
“You are.”
“…?”
Somehow, I had a feeling this would happen.
My win rate against cybernetic bodies had been poor lately, but even so, my physical strength was by no means weak.
And perhaps because I had leveled up recently,
I felt like I could move a little faster and with a little more force.
The fake ninja’s muscles swelled like a balloon, but surprisingly, I was the one who won the tug-of-war.
I grabbed the scarf and swung it straight toward the ‘other side.’
“…What!”
Maybe he had let his guard down after seeing my build.
The man couldn’t react at all and was dragged along with the scarf.
He smashed through a ceiling light with his body, leaving a long, enormous skid mark.
Crash…!!
Then twice, three times in succession.
Recalling what I had suffered at Hall Paradise, I slammed the fake ninja’s body into the floor.
It was something I could do all day, but perhaps he had thrown shuriken at me as he flew,
because several thin metal rods were embedded in my shoulder and thigh.
‘Tsk…. I shouldn’t just pull these out, right?’
While I was debating whether to pull out the shuriken, the man slowly rose to his feet.
Dark anger surfaced in the eyes concealed behind his mask.
But even then, he didn’t approach me as he had just now; he seemed to have realized that he couldn’t face me head-on in a contest of strength.
But.
What I needed was this exact moment, with the distance between the ‘fake ninja’ and the ‘cult leader’ widened.
I threw the shuriken I had picked up first straight at the cult leader.
“…Urk!”
A short, final cry.
That was the end of the cult leader, who had been secretly preparing to escape.
I spat once at the fallen leader, blood streaming from the back of his head, then
turned to the ninja standing in an awkward posture.
“What.”
If he didn’t like it, he should have protected him to the end.
The ninja’s reaction was just as I expected.
“……”
He gritted his teeth as if he might charge Michael at any moment, but getting past me, who hadn’t let my guard down for even an instant, was nearly impossible.
The fake ninja, having failed to protect the cult leader, checked the condition of his torn stealth suit and scarf, then
Poof!!
set off a smoke bomb on the floor.
“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me….”
Seriously, he’s pulling every trick in the book.
The sound of footsteps gradually receded from us.
There could have been poison mixed into the smoke, or the fake ninja might use this opening to attack Michael, so I waited for the smoke to clear while remaining as alert as possible.
Fortunately, the smoke didn’t last long.
Only Michael and I remained in the passageway.
I clicked my tongue.
“Tsk, he got away.”
It was frustrating, but I couldn’t leave Michael here and go after him.
Unless someone happened to come along and help us at just the right time….
·
·
·
“…There was a suspicious person running away over there, so I caught him and brought him here.”
“Good.”
I gave a thumbs-up.
* * *
Unfortunately, Troy Mason explained that returning the remaining believers to normal would be extremely difficult.
[They hacked the smart chips in their entirety and brainwashed them. You have to consider them completely different people now. Maybe if I went there and worked on them myself…. But that’d be difficult.]
“…There’s no other way?”
[Hmm…. They just need to avoid going berserk, right? And keep moving normally.]
“For now.”
Troy, an eighth-level Web Spider, added in an utterly calm tone.
[Well, ‘overwriting’ is possible. Hmm. Wait a minute. I’ll send you a file. If we connect this to the main equipment, the capacity should be just barely enough….]
Thinking back on it now….
I shouldn’t have taken his words so simply and moved on.
Uploading the file I received from Troy to the main equipment and seeing the people lying on the beds safely get to their feet had gone very well.
But.
Didn’t everyone in that room begin to light up like chicks?
And what they asked me was,
“…Excuse me. Are you perhaps a god?”
“?”